A unique celebration took place at Wembley last week. Inside the main banqueting suite of the national stadium, generations of black footballers, their friends and family, and others from the English game, gathered to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the arrival of the Windrush. There was jerk chicken, potent rum punch and much laughter, but the challenges that faced those first Caribbean immigrants and their descendants were not far from mind either.
Luther Blissett reflected on being reunited with his parents as a five-year-old after they, like many who left the West Indies for England, had had to travel without children to take up a new life. He recalled the first time he was called the N word as he grew up in Willesden, north-west London. Finally, he spoke too about becoming the first black player to score for England, on his debut, with a hat-trick.
Hope Powell also talked about being outside the football system, wanting to get in. She saw no one like her on TV or in the stadiums, she had to play in boys’ teams to get a game, or at least she did until authorities took unprecedented measures to stop her from doing so. She then went on to do more than anyone to establish women’s football in the country. Jermain Defoe is younger but was still able to reflect on growing up in a council estate with a mother working three jobs; her determination and a pure, unquenchable love of goals helped him to achieve transformational success.
In some ways it seemed the relationship many of the black British players had with football echoed that of the Windrush generation and the country itself: no matter how much love they showed, it never quite loved them back in the same way. But another parallel existed too; each player had helped to effect change that made the game more inclusive. As Paul Elliott, the Football Association executive and former Chelsea and Celtic defender who organised the event told the gathered crowd: “This is what the country looks like.”
The FA’s Windrush celebration was a unifying, uplifting experience but division remains over how to drive further change that everyone agrees is necessary. Some of the England team’s most popular players are black but they still experience abuse for the colour of their skin. The transition to coach or club official, meanwhile, remains impossibly hard for black players. The only black coach in the senior men’s set-up is Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, recruited as part of England’s commitment to improving diversity. The lack of representation at club level is even more stark.
This week, the Black Footballers Partnership, a collective of current and former professionals, revealed data that showed the share of coaches at England’s 92 league clubs who are of black, Asian or of mixed heritage remains at less than 5%, a fraction of the equivalent 43% share of players in the Premier League, or 34% in the EFL. The BFP also revealed that only 10 clubs had hit FA targets to diversify coaching and executive roles.
The Football Leadership Diversity Code was devised by Elliott and was the first of its kind in football. It was also a voluntary commitment, relying on public transparency to move clubs in the right direction. For the BFP the code is a “failure”, with numbers that according to its executive director, Delroy Corinaldi, “tell their own sad story at a time of celebrating 75 years of the Windrush generation”. Clubs, he said, “are collectively failing to deliver genuine, ground-breaking meaningful opportunities for diversity, and this is one of football’s biggest challenges”.
On Wednesday, Elliott issued a direct response to the BFP’s charge, saying: “Launched less than three years ago, it is premature and unfair to suggest the Leadership and Diversity Code has failed. Long-term structural changes in football will not happen overnight, and it’s vital that people around the game get behind the Code and support it.”
The BFP’s proposed solution is make recruitment targets mandatory and enforced with sanctions. Others argue for a focus on opening up recruitment processes, with targets remaining looser. All want any changes to be underwritten by an independent regulator, the generational change committed to by government but whose final scope remains subject to consultation.
To listen to Blissett or Powell tell their story, or many of the other hundreds of black professionals who have come up against barriers in English football, helps explain why there is tension over the enduringly slow speed of progress. But the black caucus within football is also bigger and more organised than ever and their ambitions fundamentally universal.
“Look at the challenges faced by the first generation,” said Elliott when he addressed his Wembley guests. “Seventy-five years later there’s still challenges, and the next generation will have theirs too. But we want the same things all our parents and grandparents stood for: it’s called equality of opportunity, and we are going to get it.”
